Game Director Tom Chilton on Balance & PvP

Skirmishes would be nice, or maybe a dps vs. dps ranked skirmishes for fun or something for more casual players. Or maybe it's something like, "I have 20 minutes, what should I do?", sort of thing where it's a quick minute or two fight and you get rating and make new rank titles that feel rare or something cool quick and fun. Also balance it out so your all in the previous season gear and all gear and scaled to previous season gear or dreadful.

This will be a long post so prepare yourselves, but it will be worth it.

The biggest thing that is putting people off from the game is the attempt by the developers to please all of the player base, and in doing so they are pleasing no one. I will start this post off with the most general issues that affect the largest percentage of the player base and then work my way down to more specific issues.

In terms of storyline, I feel like the story has become muddied. When I was in grade school I played Warcraft: Orc & Humans. The plot was clear. Through Warcraft 2, The Dark Portal and Warcraft 3, the story became richer, but it was still clear. With WoW, the storyline started to become convoluted. Now, several expansions in, there are too many forces at play for my tastes. I don't think the playerbase is interested in you mirroring the complexities of the real world with its intricate web of factions and conflicting interests. This is a story and as such needs to be cohesive and have a point. You don't have to tell us what the ending of the story of Azeroth is, but at least have a good idea of where you are taking us. I feel like you are starting to concoct storylines just to produce new expansions.

I think the second largest issue is the homogenization of classes. When I started playing WoW in TBC (widely regarded by the playerbase as the best expansion to date), each class had a unique feel to it. Hell every SPEC had a different feel to it! My first toon was a hunter and BM played different from MM which played different from SV. Now every class has a stun, an interrupt, a silence, a freedom, a self-heal. I don't mean to insult your developers, but I feel like GC and Chilton's idea of "balance" is to give every class the same abilities. This considerably lowers the replay value of this game and drivers customers away. This design approach has serious knock on effects in PvP and PvE, which will be the next two points I will address.

In PvE the homogenization of classes, coupled with the consolidation of buff and debuffs has made it so guilds "bring the player, not the class". While this is in some ways good, I feel like the developers have overlooked the negatives of this design philosophy. This change has all but killed off 25 man raiding as it is much easier to find and coordinate 10 people of your raiding proficiency than it is to do so with 25. The homogenization of classes has also contributed to the killing of middle of the road raiding guilds. With raid groups now being able to bring the player, not the class, exceptional players have left their old guilds to play with other great players. The Timmys of the World of Warcraft, God bless their souls, who stand in the fire but used to play a class that was mandatory to bring to the raid are left with no one to carry them and this bifurcates the raiding population into good and bad, with very little middle ground. This is coming from a player that had multiple top 100 ranks on WoL at the start of this expansion, before I stopped to focus on my original calling and real passion: PvP; so I don't want to hear "LOL UR BAD CARRY QQ" from the trolls.

And finally PvP. The thing that is nearest and dearest to my heart in WoW. I'll be honest and say I thought WoW was gay because of the stereotypes attached to who played it. I only started playing because the WoW episode of South Park. After I started playing I fell in love with PvP. I started watching PvP hunter videos made by Bandet of Darkspear to learn to master my class. I enjoyed PvPing and seeing myself progress from a noob in all blues and greens, that was getting my face smashed in by everyone. To less of a noob that had a few epic PvP pieces and could hold my own against players. But do you know what my favorite memories from that time will always be? Fighting against classes that countered mine, or at least players that outgeared me so much that they countered me. I had to learn to PvP smarter and better and that was a reward all in itself. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that it's ok if some classes counter others by design. That's always been a part of the game and frankly adds the flavor to it that keeps a lot of players around.

For arena specifically, I am still in the midst of my first season so my feedback may be off base at higher levels of play, but I feel like arena right now is less about consistently outplaying another player, but rather lining up cooldowns and making sure you don't mess up your "burst" windows. As I've already stated, too many classes have similiar CCs. It's not just a case of instant CC as the developers keep talking about, it's a case of too much CC to the point where PvP damage HAS to be super high in burst or you just can't kill anyone.

I have a lot of suggestions on how to implement some of these ideas, but I think this post has gone on long enough. I hope I haven't offended anyone, I just want to help keep a great game great. =)

i think a lot of the problem is the cc and dr issues. Also agree with burst being way to high, but when it comes down too it someone is always going to think its not balanced. As far as reducing spells i think if you are going to reduce one shield (like mages) you should reduce them all to absorb the same amt. and dmg wise for those that think a warlocks Chaos bolt should be lowered i think not. Not because i am a warlock more because its the easy spell in game to stop. it has a almost 3 second cast, so if you are getting hit by it focus the warlock or cc him first and issue is solved.

I notice this while scanning alliance players in bg starter areas using playerscore. They all share the same pattern % wins and losses in certain bgsThis is mineI have 3718 samples (bg) 45% 1698 wins and that's fine

I would like to strongly point out Eye of the Storm and Arathi BasinCheck a larger group, check the last two months. The pattern is about the same for people who have much smaller bg experience. Is it broken?I would say that i'm probably going to black list two bg's when it works again.

Burst needs to be high or higher to bring down healers. Some healers can handle damage from 3-5 enemy and still keep people up.

CC is getting out of hand now that everybody has several. It is common to not get a shot in for 15 sec now. My main cc (sheep) heals people with diminishing times per cc and so I can't just get stupid about when I use it. It is common now to get burned down by other types within the timeframe of the cc. I'm a mage though so i kinda expect that.

I really enjoy the higher gear levels but now what will happen to a new lvl 90? They buy all crafted to start and come to bg and get blown away because the gear lvl of a bg is now so much higher. I do like the hk's though.

I notice this while scanning alliance players in bg starter areas using playerscore. They all share the same pattern % wins and losses in certain bgsThis is mineI have 3718 samples (bg) 45% 1698 wins and that's fine

I would like to strongly point out Eye of the Storm and Arathi BasinCheck a larger group, check the last two months. The pattern is about the same for people who have much smaller bg experience. Is it broken?I would say that i'm probably going to black list two bg's when it works again.

Eye of the storm W/L is bugged in the Achievement statistics panel as far as I know. I was locked on 27 wins out of 150-odd games when I got Eye of the Storm Veteran achievement on this toon. Still on the same amount now as far as I know.

since we have to learn a new pvp game each expansion...can we pleeaase go back to a SKILL-based game like the original and still best, most player friendly game ever-Ultima Online..no not UR madskillz fanbois...the skills you use the most rise..ones u avoid stay where they are

There are a huge number of things that need to be addressed. Many of them are quite simple.

Holy Paladin CC needs to be toned down. Paladins definitely needed a form of CC that didn't require them to run into the centre of everything and risk getting blown up, but right now their CC is the best in the game, along with the best single target heals, and very obviously the best choice for any melee team.

Druids are unkillable by melee unless the druid is not paying attention. A blink and vanish on a 30 second cooldown? Remove the vanish aspect of it and it would be balanced. It's really as simple as that. In the interview Kalgan specifically states that many class developers envision an ability being used defensively when often it gets used offensively. This is another perfect example of that. Druids blink/stealth -> pounce -> cyclone or disorienting roar to the other healer without any risk to themselves, and without the other healer having any way to avoid it.

Shamans are amazing healers with a great amount of utility to help their teammates stay alive and land a kill. Their team-defensive abilities are too strong. However their individual defensive abilities are abysmal and the silence change just exasperated that. Every other healer has a defensive ability that they can use while stunned or silenced, often on a short cooldown. If shamans are stunned or silenced without a pvp trinket they're 100% useless, especially without any dispel protection for Earth Shield.

Mage and Warrior burst is absurd. I'm sure Kalgan knows this and was thinking of this when he was talking about pvp burst. There is no denying that it's beyond overpowered. I understand that it's very tricky balancing warriors as they're often either too powerful, or too weak as their only role on the team is to do damage. People should be concerned if a warrior is sitting on a target (unlike Seasons 10 & 11), but it should not revolve around if a warrior is on you for more than 5 seconds you're likely going to die.

Mages burst revolves around such a short cooldown (deep freeze). However I believe a 4 second stun on a 30 second cooldown (coldsnap-able) is too much. Reducing the stun to 3 seconds would still allow a mage to get off a frost bomb, but not allow them to spam 2-3 ice lances for 80k on a target with 65% dmg reduction (that number is not exaggerated).

Fix hunter bugs and they should be all right. Enough said.

Warlocks need some affliction buffs. Affliction is not viable directly due to this expansion's dispel change (which was a good idea), and most players' inability to get any casts off due to the large amount of instant cc we're seeing this expansion.

Monks definitely need some buffs. However I'm pretty unfamiliar with that class so anything I could say wouldn't be based on anything other than my limited experience with them.

Classes like DKs that do a fair amount of damage but nothing over the top do not require buffs in order to become competitive. Other classes simply need to be brought down and I'm sure we'll see a greater number of these underrepresented classes being utilized in various comps. In the meantime however it's extremely rare to queue into an arena team that doesn't have a mage or a warrior on it.

I liked a lot of what Kalgan was saying about the upcoming PvP changes. However I'm disappointed that there continue to be the exact same problems that seem to plague every season. If the majority of players are consistently concerned about

1) Burst damage2) Instant crowd control

I question why this is the burst-iest season we've seen since season 5 and easily the season with the MOST instant, unavoidable crowd control. That said, I commend your efforts to eliminate pve gear in pvp. It was a plague on competitive arena. One thing that was an unfortunate by-product of that change though is that it makes it impossible for someone to play a new character late in the season. The pvp power on weapon change was good to ensure that pve weapons weren't used, but not having a base weapon farmable by honour makes it so players have to wait a base 4 weeks before they can by the tier 1 pvp weapon in order to even participate on a semi-level playing field.

Thanks for the interview and look forward to hearing about some of the changes.

I think the WoW development team would do good for themselves to hire this person...

lies lies and more lies.... they are not fixing pvp. stop dreaming, they know you'll pay the monthly fee. So they just keep the classes they currently play happy......and the corrupt GC wil just keep laughing at us

I agree with almost everything that was said in that post. The main thing though, is that there was NO MENTION ABOUT ARMS OR FURY! EVERYONE JUST ASSUMES THAT WARRIORS ARE OVERPOWERED JUST BECAUSE ARMS HAS IT SO DAMN GOOD!

FURY HAS BEEN CRIPPLED EVER SINCE 4.3! Arms gets EVERYTHING it wants! Arms can just mortal strike and overpower all day while having +60% crit chance on Overpower. Not to mention, It can't be blocked, dodged, or parried.

I am quitting this game in the next few months because of the lack of Fury Fixing and because of the excess Arms Domination that is causing warriors to get nerfs that will make Fury COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE!

FURY IS ALREADY HARD ENOUGH TO PVP WITH AND NOW THAT ARMS IS SO DAMN OVERPOWERED, EVERYONE SAYS "NERF WARRIORS"

Any plans to nerf multiple solar beams in rated BG's? a single druid DOES need solar beam..that is not the issue

BUT when say you are in silvershard mines and opponent team has 2 - 3 boomkins....that many solar beams in a confined area (the circle) is simply impossible to counter since you cannot prevent it. Thoughts on how to fix this?

heres a little something for your "balanced" pvp I played my warrior on moonguard who does bs with Kelthuzad zerver. Yesterday my warrior in the random bgs I played 76 games and won 5. And on my horde rogue on Kt server the same battle groupe I went all day played 56 games won 3. Explain that for me cause it is really starting to piss me the !@#$ off.

The only thing I care about is recreating old Alterac Valley or designing a new battleground from scratch that played with that style. The extreme emphasis on small scale, quick PvP in this game doesn't appeal to me and it is beyond stale.

I will never be touching Arena or RBG.....ever. Just give me a large, epic 40v40 BG like old AV was and you'll have me as a customer for life. That is all I want.